The Pumpkin Patch – An American Tradition

One of the first places I brought Carlos when he was my boyfriend was to a pumpkin patch, and one of the first things I showed him was how to to carve a jack-o-lantern. I’ve always been interested in other cultures and traditions, but there was also something exciting about showing Carlos my own.

Fifteen years later, going to the pumpkin patch as a family each October is one of our favorite things.

The pumpkin patch we usually go to has goats and you can buy food pellets for them from a bubble gum style machine for a quarter. Over the years, Carlos has come to be more of an animal lover. He looks so happy petting the goat here.

After feeding the goats we considered giving the corn maze a try but it takes 45 minutes to go through, (maybe an hour given my sense of direction) – so we decided we’ll come back another day to do it.

Into the pumpkin patch.

My boys are getting bigger, (The oldest is taller than Carlos), but they haven’t outgrown the pumpkin patch.

There’s a type of squash in El Salvador called Pipián. We aren’t sure if this squash here is related but when you’re accustomed to their palm-sized Latin American cousins, these are kind of hilarious.

Now that we’ve picked our pumpkins and brought them home, we’ll soon carve them into jack-o-lanterns. When we clean out the inside of the pumpkin we always reserve the seeds for roasting and eating. Roasted pumpkin seeds, funnily enough, remind Carlos of El Salvador.

6 thoughts on “The Pumpkin Patch – An American Tradition”

Hiya Pal…been away for a while from blogsphere and sending my love to you and family. The boys are growing so fast and what a lovely photo …thank you for sharing.

I remembered when I first started reading your blog, I asked you what is pumpkin patch and you shared it with me so now I know what it meant….fantastic to see just huge space and seeing the pumpkins scattered all across the fields.

Great pictures! I miss fall. Despite having grown up in Northern Virginia and despite celebrating traditional American holidays — including Halloween — I never carved a pumpkin until last year! Crazy. And they are expensive here in El Salvador so I don’t know that we’ll do it this year …